


pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals

by venndaai



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Autistic Character, Beverly Lives, Gen, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Same-Sex Daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There's a gaping hole in Will Graham,” Ms Lounds says, her words so carefully formed between pearly white teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

 

The man who killed her father has no daemon.

“There's a gaping hole in Will Graham,” Ms Lounds says, her words so carefully formed between pearly white teeth. Her sinuous red fox is as polished as she is, every hair of carmine fur in place. He is not touching Damaris, but he is looking at her intently with small bright amber eyes. Abigail does not touch Damaris either, though she longs for comfort. Instead she pulls her knees more tightly to her chest, grateful once again for Doctor Bloom's generosity, the denim of her jeans soothing under her hands. She sits isolated on the bedspread. No one touches anyone else. The room is contact-free.

“No daemon,” Abigail echoes, expression blank, because she knows that's what the woman wants. Her emotions are in genuine turmoil, but she won't let this journalist have any of that. No daemon. She's heard of the phenomenon, of course, knows it happens about once every two million people, so there must be quite a few of them in America. She'd never expected one to cross her path. Never expected one to stain his fingers with her blood.

“Birth defect,” Lounds says, concerned and sad. “No wonder he's unstable. It's a warning sign for psychopathy, you know.”

That sounds kind of dubious to Abigail. She wishes the fox would talk. His silent stare is getting unnerving. Damaris shifts nervously, long ears twitching.

The door eases open and then he's there, awkwardly taking up too much space in her whitewashed room. She doesn't need to be told. Those frightened, darting blue eyes are imprinted on her memory in indelible ink. He tenses when he sees Freddie Lounds.

“Will you excuse us please,” Will Graham sort of shouts with impressively tranquil fury. Abigail doesn't need to see his daemon to know he's incensed.

“We're not leaving you alone with them,” the fox states with righteous dignity. The word 'freak' passes silently across the room. Will Graham's mouth tightens into a sort of smile. He nods at the orderlies Abigail didn't see before.

They take Abigail's crimson friend by the arm and more or less manhandle her to the door, their large dog daemons shepherding the fox. They have to maneuver around another big man, who she recognizes as the one they say saved her life. He's smiling politely, and his big snake daemon isn't hissing, so either Abigail's terrible at reading people or he's got iron control over his anger.

“I'm Special Agent Will Graham,” says the killer in the rumpled green jacket. Abigail reaches out a hand and lets her fingers fist in her daemon's coarse thin hair.

Lounds gets in one parting shout. “By Special Agent, he means not really an Agent. Someone like him could never pass the screening process.”

“I must insist you leave the room,” says the pale big man, and his snake still doesn't hiss, just coils in loops around his neck, tongue flicking in and out, tasting the air. She is enormous. She must be very heavy on his shoulders, but if he feels the weight he doesn't show it.

Abigail would have wanted to keep Freddie Lounds' card, just in case, but Will Graham snatches it before it reaches her fingers, and then Lounds is finally gone. Inside Abigail seethes. Being a vulnerable child may be her best defensive strategy at the moment, but she can't play that game if it means giving up her pride.

She bites the inside of her cheek, tasting coppery blood. “I'm Abigail,” she says primly, letting her legs relax a bit. “And this is Damaris.” Normally she'll introduce her daemon with a touch of defensiveness. High school was hell for a girl with a doe spirit. But that seems too trivial to mention to this man with an invisible soul. If he has a soul at all.

“A pleasure to properly meet you,” says the pale man in the very fine suit. “I am Doctor Lecter. I do hope we can be friends.”

The snake daemon's tongue flicks out, swish, swish, and Abigail thinks it must be some kind of cobra. Beneath her fingers, Damaris shivers.

 

* * *

 

  
“Is that why he collects strays, do you suppose?” Hannibal asks. “An attempt to relieve a culturally-imposed loneliness, to fill a perceived gap in his life?”

Alana sighs. “Hannibal, I'm pretty sure Will collects dogs because he really likes dogs.”

He hands her her beer with a flourish. “I can certainly understand your academic fascination. He is utterly unique.”

“He's my friend,” Alana retorts, in case Hannibal isn't getting the message. She sips at the beer- it's perfect, naturally- and places it on the counter. Rafal swoops down in a silent rush of air past feathers, to try and taste it himself. Hannibal's beer glasses are wide enough and squat enough that he succeeds without too much trouble.

Cassia's fifteen feet lie coiled on the counter in a mass of brown and gold. Her head weaves slightly from side to side. “Are you protective of him because he has no daemon to act as a natural protector?” Her voice is always soft and as strongly accented as Hannibal's, but Alana has a very close bond with her daemon, and Rafal's hearing is perfect. Alana can make out every word.

“I'm protective of all my friends,” Alana says, aware that this is a weak argument.

She exchanges a quick look with Rafal, and knows they're both remembering the same thing: Will Graham drinking coffee with them on his porch, the air crisp and gorgeous as the rising morning sun begins to heat the fields and forests, Will folding himself into an old deck chair, dogs on his lap and at his feet, Will's haunted indirect gaze and quick involuntary twitches towards a more defensive posture. She realized that morning that even in his large, intensely customized house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by his loving dogs, Will didn't feel safe.

That thought leads her to Abigail Hobbs. Another person deprived of the real feeling of home. She'd looked so genuinely pleased when Alana gave her those clothes. Alana could see her so clearly in her mind's eye, the blue-eyed, dark-haired girl with the silent, skittish female daemon.

“I must also confess to a certain unprofessional curiosity about him,” Hannibal says. “Have you ever wondered what form his daemon would have taken?”

“Yes,” Alana admits, because a denial would be an extremely obvious lie.

“And? Your personal opinion? Would she be a canine, like his much loved dogs?”

“No. No way.” All right, so maybe she's devoted an unseemly amount of time to thinking about this. Like a child guessing at the future shape of her friends' daemons. It's harmless enough. “All canines are pack animals. They live off social interaction as much as food. Will is, well, not a lone wolf. More like a lone bear. His daemon is a solitary creature. Though I don't think they,” she emphasizes this, a gentle call out, “are a bear. Not enough confidence.”

Hannibal gives her a deferential nod. “I think they are a mongoose.”

“Really,” Alana says, and downs the last of her beer. It's strong, and burns slightly in her throat.

She wishes Hannibal's house had more natural light. She's starting to feel that odd discomfort she always got when she knew it was night time outside but there was a vague uncertainty in her, because it had still been light when she'd gone inside.

“Do you suppose,” Cassia muses, “that he would still have his astonishing talent, if his daemon had separated properly at birth?”

Alana considers this.

_“Too broken to date?”_

_“You're not broken.”_

_“Of course I'm broken. Some mistake during fetal development, a lifetime of malfunction.”_

_“Will. You know that's not true. If you had a daemon, I doubt your true self would be much different. A little more extroverted, maybe. But the way you are isn't a fault or a disorder.”_

_“No, those are whole other aspects of my personality.”_

“I think he would be less afraid,” she says at last.

That's the most she'll commit to, no matter how much Hannibal and Cassia push. Rafal settles on her shoulder and she strokes his soft gray feathers. He hoots quietly, and nibbles on her hair.

 

* * *

 

 

“Shut up, Zeller. No one's ever proved a scientific link between nonseparation and psychopathy. No one reputable,” Beverly says, holding a hand up against Brian's inevitable objection. “You're just making yourself sound like an idiot.”

Wonder of wonders, she gets a Genuine Will Graham Smile for that, just a small twitch in the muscles around his mouth but it makes her want to grin back like a loon. Then the mouth turns back down, and she knows he's still sore from Zeller's stupidity. He has a sort of sarcastic upsetness he slips into when people say that dumb shit he must have heard a million times before. Bev recognizes that, because she's used it herself, every Asian-American girl in the public school system has.

Still, he smiled. She has a strong urge to high-wing Adrastos, which is like a high-five but infinitely cooler. She and Adrastos have taken on a new project, namely Figure Out How To Read Will Graham. It's a challenge worthy of their skills. Someone like Will would be hard to decipher under usual circumstances, but without a daemon to express his mood he's even more mysterious. Beverly is determined to crack his secret body language code. And maybe it's just an excuse to try making friends with him, but what's wrong with that? He seems like he could use more friends. Particularly with people like Brian around. And he gets her Jim Morrison references, and he's never talked over her.

She doesn't mind the lack of eye contact. She'd be hypocritical if she did, since there've been more than a few colleagues put off by her direct stares. The interesting thing, though, is that often when he talks to her, he'll actually look at Adrastos. Not most of the time, but for a statistically significant fraction of it. And sometimes, when Will thinks they're not looking, she'll catch him glancing wistfully at her clever bird, like he's just a bit jealous of them for having each other.

That's not a new experience. Everyone's a bit jealous of the flyers. And Adrastos can go unusually far. They trained themselves to do it, when Beverly was a kid and Adrastos wanted to soar up high. Plus raven daemons are undeniably badass, and he's a gorgeous specimen, really glossy and huge. They're used to admiring looks.

Will's looks are different.

“Speaking of daemons,” Price interjects, “you guys'll want to hear this. I just got the background report on the victims. Took a while, since they weren't in city records. Had to find relatives in six different states.”

“And?” Beverly demands.

“They all had rat daemons,” he says. “Every one of them.”

Will starts, pushes himself off the wall, steps towards the row of bodies on their gurneys. “They were unclean,” he says, in a voice not quite his own. “Devious, nasty- always scurrying about, getting into the larder and _spoiling the feast_.”

“That's just prejudiced crap,” Brian tells him sanctimoniously. “This isn't the middle ages. No one drowns women with black cat daemons any more.”

“He believes it,” Will says, still unfocused, or maybe just hyperfocused on something invisible. He's begun to circle slowly around the gurneys.

Adrastos hops up onto the far right gurney to observe the bodies again. “The bodies weren't left outside. They were stored somewhere cool and a bit damp, and then placed after a few days.” His beady eyes dart along the line. “They all have obvious fatal wounds,” he points out. “He didn't murder them by killing their daemons.”

Will stops moving. “No,” he says. “No, he'd want to be able to look at his work afterwards. He wanted to remember how he killed them.” His hand starts rubbing his forehead. “But he immobilized the daemons somehow. See- see, they didn't die instantly and the killer didn't leave blood at the crime scene. Rats would have drawn blood, for sure. Maybe the victims were sedated?”

One good thing about Bev's job is her mother never asks “So how is work going?” But in her head she can hear her youngest sister gleefully shrieking, “ _Sick_.”

Their Special Agent steps back, balancing a little weirdly, stepping down slowly and then putting all his weight on that back foot, kind of pivoting himself backwards. His hands come up, fist in his hair. He reaches the wall, slides down to the floor. He mumbles something, then clears his throat. “They were all homeless?”

“Yeah,” Bev says quietly.

“And mostly minorities.” He sticks up one unsteady arm. “Can I see the report?”

Zeller and Price look at each other like can you believe this guy? Bev grinds her teeth.

“I haven't printed it out yet,” Price says.

“Please,” Will says, shaping the word slowly and carefully, voice shaking on the last syllable.

“Or you could just come over here and look at the screen,” Price mutters, but Bev glares at him and he sighs theatrically and prints out the document, making a big production out of it. Baby. Bev snags the printout, bright white paper between her fingertips, walks to Will, brushes the edge of the paper against his outstretched hand. He grabs it, brings it to his face.

“Oh,” he says. “Six of them were mentally ill.” He drops the paper, grinds his hands into his eye sockets, trying to rub out a headache or maybe just stop himself from seeing anything more.

It's always instantly obvious when the boss enters a room, even if he manages to restrain himself from banging the door. He has an enormous angry presence that precedes him, and if that wasn't enough the massive tiger prowling at his side sends primal fear shooting straight to the amygdala. Price takes his feet off the table in a hurry. Will raises his head.

“Well?” The question's addressed to Will and Will alone. Jenny glares at the rest of them, tail whipping. “What've you got?”

“White affluent male,” Will tells him. “Weasel daemon. Or possibly ferret. Mustelidae for certain.”

“You're sure?” the tiger asks, tail lashing.

He doesn't answer, just nods, and then his head thuds back against the wall.

“Good,” Jack says, and sweeps out again as suddenly as he arrived.

Will pulls his knees up against his chest.

Bev goes to get coffee and when she returns he's still folded into the exact same corner. She hands him a latte. He doesn't smile, but he gives her a small nod of gratitude. She'll take it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Does it ever bother you?” Will asks Cassia abruptly.

They're used to apparent non sequiturs by now. “Does what bother me, Will?” she enquires.

“The way we pay more attention to people than daemons,” he says. “Are you okay with being considered an extension of Hannibal? Does it annoy you when everyone addresses him, not you?”

“Curious about a daemon's perspective?” Her voice is sibilant and slightly hissed, emerging from a mouth only a tiny bit open. “You persist in perceiving us as entirely separate beings. I can be angry at Hannibal, when we disagree. But it would be impossible for me to feel jealousy towards him. Everything he has is mine also. We are one creature.”

Will turns away from them, towards the wall. “I know that,” he says. “Intellectually I know that. No, more than intellectually- when I look at killers and see through their eyes I become aware of their daemons and I know they are a part of me, even though I've never experienced that feeling myself. Sometimes when I dream of Garret Jacob Hobbs I'm not him, I'm the wolf, and all appears in perfect _clarity_ and _order_. But I wake up, and I'm confused again.”

“You fear confusion,” Hannibal says.

Will strangles a laugh. “I fear a lot of things. I'm sure you've noticed.”

He's shaking, just slightly. His face is flushed. It's rather magnificent. It would be very interesting, Hannibal thinks, to push him just a little bit further.

_“Encephalitis in a nonseparated patient,” Cassia entices. “This case is utterly unique. It will probably never occur again. A perfect chance to study a neurological disease independent of a daemon's mind.”_

_Sutcliffe was snared from the first sentence. Cassia has a gift. Hannibal raises a handkerchief to cover a smirk._

“Will,” Hannibal says, and drags Will's eyes up to meet his. He steps forward, places a firm hand on Will's shoulder. “I can help you find your courage.”

His eyes are wide and blue and lovely. He takes a small involuntary step back. His left hand reaches for the table, for support.

Cassia slides her golden head beneath his fingers.

Will freezes.

A perfect ice sheet of a moment: Will's fevered palm warm on Cassia's smooth scales, his shoulder trembling beneath Hannibal's hand, and Hannibal savors the possibility that this is it, that Will can finally _see and understand_ , that comprehension will dawn in those blue eyes, that the mongoose will leave his hiding place for good.

Will jerks his hand away like Cassia is red-hot. “Sorry,” he mutters, looking at the ground and stepping back. “Sorry, sorry, I-”

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Hannibal says, and he means every word.

 

* * *

 

_The ravenstag runs through Will Graham's dreams, lighting up the woods with its burning antlers. “Wait,” Will shouts. He's scratched by thorns and choked by smoke, and he loses his glasses, somewhere in the underbrush, but no matter how fast he runs, he can never catch up. The fires die, and he's left in a clearing, weighed down by the blackest of starless nights, utterly, inevitably alone._

 


	2. Chapter 2

 warnings for about the same stuff from canon here, particularly cannibalism.

 

* * *

 

The upside of prison is you get a lot of quiet time to think.

Which probably also counts as a downside, but Will's grateful for the strictly limited sensory stimulation provided by his new environment. He doesn't miss the harsh fluorescent lights of the BAU, or Jenny's spine-tingling snarls, or the constant pressure to produce, perform, justify his existence.

He does very much miss his dogs and the soft, thick material of his own clothes and his CD collection and soft surfaces to sit on and spaces bigger than twelve feet square to pace and food that-

food that- 

 _\- food that was interesting enough to wake up his appetite dark wood panels in natural colors luxurious leather chairs a balcony of bookshelves a heavy coat around his shoulders smooth scales so smooth and strangely soft-_  

He's not grateful for the chains and the cold and the depersonalizing stares from the staff and Chilton's smug self satisfied chuckle and the knowledge that his body is no longer even legally his.

There's a lot he doesn't enjoy, really.

Chilton glares tiredly from his chair behind the yellow line, iridescent green beetle buzzing with annoyance. Will idly kicks his feet against bars of the cage and for the first time in his life he's glad he doesn't have a daemon.

  

* * *

 

 

His medications have to be specially calculated so he doesn't get an overdose of chemicals meant to alter two minds. Will swallows his antipsychotics without complaint. He welcomes the side effects; they give him a specific misery to focus on.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to quell his nightmares. He considers complaining to Chilton, but decides not to give him the satisfaction. 

From the perspective of a cell, the enemy is the entire world outside those four walls. This comes as an enormous relief. 

He's finding trusting only himself to be infinitely preferable to trusting everyone but himself. 

“It must be hard,” someone said to him once, he doesn't remember who, someone with fascinated eyes so hard and bright he had to turn away. He'd heard the rest of it like a distant hum inside his ears. Must be hard. Not having someone you never had to doubt, someone you could always confide in. Yes, he supposes it's hard, but really he thinks he'd be fine if only people would leave him alone. The world has dogs, after all. Dogs aren't duplicitous. He can't remember if he said this or just let it rattle around in his skull, drowning out the drone of the outside world. 

Things rattle around in here, too. It doesn't bother him like it used to.

 Sometimes he's surprised at his own ability to handle the current circumstances, but really he should have predicted this. Here he is at the very bottom of the pit, the place that's haunted him since he was seven years old. This is the nadir. There is no way for things to get worse. And he knows he doesn't actually belong here so that's at least a significant divergence from his nightmares. 

His isolation has always been his defining characteristic. Time to see if he can turn it into strength.

 

* * *

 

 

Will slides to the ground of the cell, leaning against the bars, so Dr. duMaurier's elegant moth daemon can whisper into his ear. She stands the required five feet away, strain on her face at the distance from him. “We wish we could give you something more,” the moth whispers.

Will's fingers clench on the bars.

For weeks, that's all he has to cling to: a gently whispered “We believe you,” contraband smuggled to him before they were torn away by the guards.

 When he moves too suddenly and is rewarded by a twitching muscle in Beverly's cheek, a flutter of raven's wings as she forces herself not to flinch, when Alana reaches out to touch his hand with a deadly, suffocating compassion, and Will has to drop his gaze, turn away from an owl's unblinking stare, when Doctor Lecter stands just slightly over the painted line and asks, concerned, “Are they feeding you well?” as Cassia sniffs the air, swaying hypnotically from her place on the chair- then he closes his eyes, remembers “We believe you.”

It's so little as to almost be worse than nothing. It's not remotely close to enough. But after half an hour on sore knees sobbing, begging for Cassia's forgiveness, it works fairly well as a touchstone. _We believe you,_ he thinks, and he's back inside his own skin, tear tracks already drying from his face.

If he had a soul they could whisper it to each other. They would keep each other warm at night, he could touch something smooth, something soft, fur or feathers or scales, whenever he needed to. But he remembers visiting Abel Gideon, remembers the creature drugged out of her mind, muzzled and chained so she couldn't scratch at the glass. He thinks of specialists analyzing his daemon's behavior, of doctors handling it with white-gloved hands, and he shivers himself to sleep.

  

* * *

 

 

There's something unreal about the trial.

It's only just occurred to him that this system may actually kill him.

 He sits in court in a suit that looks like it was meant for a psychopathic murderer, and he tunes out Freddie and tunes out Chilton and almost manages to tune out Hannibal, completely fails at tuning out Cassia. And then he goes back to his cage, obedient, submissive, a docile monster.

 There is a strong chance he'll spend twenty years in jail and die a caged animal humanely put down by the impersonal sword of Justice, and his name will become a rallying cry for those who've always argued for the right to murder daemonless children. Freddie Lounds and her silvertongued fox will make a mint on talk shows and book deals. Abigail and Damaris will still be dead, regardless. The memory passes through him like a shiver before he can even try to fight it, the memory that's too vivid to be real, the bristly texture of doe's hair between the fingers of one hand, the weight of a knife in the other.

 He shudders, and pulls his knees closer to his chest, folds himself further into the corner between cot and concrete wall. There's someone watching. His head jerks up. Dark, wet, limpid eyes, large pools of void. The stag shakes out its feathers. It takes a step closer, hoof ringing on the damp floor, and gently nibbles on Will's hair.

 He slides his eyelids shut and listens to the loud rhythm of its breathing. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to be killed or executed or put down like a rabid dog.

 So be smarter, Graham. Stop wallowing and start thinking.

 The ravenstag's horns are smooth velvet under his absently stroking fingers. Chilton would tell him if he still had a fever. It's not the encephalitis. He never had hallucinations before Jack and Jenny entered his lecture hall.

 “Don't go,” he whispers, eyes still closed, stretching out the syllables. The steady breathing continues, warm and wet on the side of his neck.

 He doesn't want to die alone.

  

* * *

 

 

“I convinced her not to break in,” Adrastos says. He perches on the corner of the table, ruffling his wing feathers and hopping about, betraying Beverly's- excitement? Nervousness? Frustration?

 Will glances at Beverly sideways beneath his eyelashes. She sighs loudly, and rolls her eyes quick at her daemon before looking back at Will. Will can't help noticing that she's gone back to her old habit of staring directly at him, which makes him uncomfortable but it's so much better than when she was deliberately keeping her eyes down. “I could have done it.”

 “No you couldn't have,” Will snaps. “I told you to stay away from him.” His hands are shaking in his lap, rattling the chains. He sticks them on the table in front of him, focuses until the trembling ceases.

 She shakes her head and sucks on her lip in annoyance. “Jack will never buy it. Will, I need evidence.”

 Will forces his eyes to meet hers. Dark eyes, like Adrastos' feathers. “”Are we on a first name basis now, Ms Katz?”

 The corners of her mouth twitch.

 “You believe me,” he says. A realization. A revelation. A fundamental alteration in the cosmos.

 The twitch in her mouth spreads into a grin. Adrastos hops directly in front of Will. “Yeah,” he says. “We do.”

 “You're way too much of a dweeb to be a psychopath,” Beverly says. Her hands are splayed, fingers tapping the table's surface. “And too smart to keep up this game unless it's the truth.”

 A wave of happiness washes over Will, and he smiles back at them so they'll know how he feels.

 “We'll get him,” Adrastos says, so confident and self-assured it makes Will's heart hurt.

 “Be careful,” he begs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They're the ones who come let him out.

“No Jack?” Will enquires, one hand on the wall, readjusting to open space.

“No Jack,” Adrastos confirms, and does a strange bird wink at him.

He stumbles on the steps, and Beverly catches him before he's even fully aware that he's falling, a strong arm around his shoulders, and in a strange long moment of weakness he leans against her side; she's about the same height as him, and he's light enough now that she's able to support him without much difficulty. She doesn't say anything but her fingers tighten on his shoulder.

“Will?” Adrastos again, concerned. “You okay?”

He doesn't mean to say “I'm afraid” but his mouth moves anyway, words slipping out. “Why does he want me out? What is he planning on doing with me?”

“He's not going to touch you,” Beverly says fiercely. “I swear to God I'll put a bullet in his big forehead if he tries.”

Will doesn't reply to that. It's understandable for her to be feeling protective right now, but eventually she'll see what is so crystal clear to him now, she'll understand that he has to make himself into bait. For Abigail; for all the ghosts who scream at him you ate our flesh; for Georgia Madchen and Miriam Lass; for Will himself. Penance, or vengeance, or holy duty, he doesn't care what it is that drives him now but he can't possibly let it go.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In his dreams he presses the edge of a knife against Hannibal's neck, and Cassia tightens her golden coils around Will's throat in turn. Hannibal is still. He does not fight the ropes. Will struggles to breathe. The knife is unsteady; it scores a thin red line across Hannibal's throat. Cassia squeezes. Will's vision is blurring but he is still hyper aware of every place her scales touch his skin. His nerve endings are on fire. He slices, and red blood sprays out less like a fine mist and more like a tidal wave. He is drenched with it.

He wakes up with a sheet tangled around his neck.

 

* * *

 

 

Miriam Lass has wrapped herself in silence. It's Clary that Will talks to, the nervous tiny starling who can never seem to stay still. He can see they're frightened by him, but he's used to that by now.

“We never saw his face,” Clary says, hopping distractedly from the bookcase to Miriam's shoulder.

“Did you ever see or hear any indication of his daemon?”

Miriam looks down, fingers knotting. The starling flutters with more anxiety, her wings flapping like she's struggling against the air. “No,” she says. “No, no, we- we didn't see anything. I'm sorry.”

Will can see in his mind's eye the hypnotic sway of the cobra. It feels less like imagination and more like another buried memory. Sitting in that solid leather chair, eyelids heavy, every inch of him shaking, and all he can see is that golden shape moving back and forth, all he hears is a voice like honey-coated velvet, talking and talking, quiet and relentless. He thinks of little birds staring glassy-eyed at their approaching deaths, beautiful scaled destruction.

Miriam folds her arms protectively over her chest, rubs at her sleeves. Even the bird can't meet his eyes. “We think we'd like to go now,” she says. Will suddenly remembers kindergarten, the little girls shrieking and clutching their daemons tight whenever he passed too close. His teachers had let him read in the corner most days, since it meant they didn't have to deal with him. Even back then he'd scorned the big friendly picture books with their brightly colored paintings of children of various colors and their cute puppy daemons, their ducklings and baby goats and rainbow butterflies.

“Of course,” he says. He'd left the door open, so he doesn't have to move, just stands there as she walks out, Clary swooping along behind her.

The inner door opens and Jack and Beverly come in, Adrastos perched on Beverly's shoulder, Jenny padding along a few feet behind.

“She doesn't think she's lying,” Will says. “But she's uncomfortable nevertheless. She instinctively knows that there's more than she's telling.”

“Great,” Jack says. “Call us when you actually have something useful.”

Will hears Beverly sigh, but he's not present any more. Even as he moves out of Jack's way, he's retreating inside to the river, the tree, the snake and the rope and the knife. He wants to see Cassia terrified, wants her to know, for once, what it's like to be the prey.

The natural predator of the cobra is the mongoose. Will thinks he could be a mongoose, easy.

 

* * *

 

“Kevin,” Peter says. “He used to be a sparrow.”

“Like Sarah Craber's daemon.”

Peter makes a sound of assent. His fingers stroke the little rat.

It's not unusual for traumatic brain injuries to trigger an adult daemon transformation. Will knows this well from a childhood spent devouring all available information on daemon-related disorders. A changed daemon isn't seen as an abomination like Will is, but there's more than enough prejudice to screw over a vulnerable suspect like Peter.

“Peter,” Will says, “tell me why you put a starling in her chest and not a sparrow.”

“I didn't want her to be alone,” Peter says, and a tear slides down his cheek, drops from his chin. “I knew the sparrow was gone, but I didn't. I didn't want her to be alone. I couldn't give her a sparrow because that would be. I wasn't trying to replace him. I wasn't. I just wanted them to have company.”

Will touches the starling's cage, cool metal wire. He thinks he can understand Peter's hoarding. There's something soothing about the creature, so clearly just a bird, empty of the unnerving human spark so clear in Miriam Lass's Clary. “It's not always that bad,” he says. “Being alone.”

“It was for her,” Peter states, definitively. “She lost him.”

“Peter,” Will says, “is your shadow alone?”

A long silence. “No,” Peter says at last. He says it to the bird. Kevin sits quietly, observing Will with small black eyes.

“Who is with him?”

Peter shudders. “It's not her fault. She's just acting on her nature. It's him who- who's wrong, who's bad. She-”

“What kind of animal is she, Peter?”

He doesn't say _it's okay,_ because that would be a lie.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Will can't look directly at Randall Tier. He lets Jack do the talking. He can feel Tier's eyes on him, though. Will moves around the display and Tier follows, a predator-prey circle so subtle Will would be surprised if Jack saw it.

“Do you know what it's like when the skin you're wearing doesn't fit?” Tier asks, not even pretending to be addressing Jack, and Will sucks in a breath and walks quickly out of the museum. He hears Jack call after him but he ignores it.

He stands outside in the slush of the museum parking lot breathing in crystal cold air, feeling it sting in his lungs and not thinking of anything for a few long minutes, and then Jenny is there at his side, a foot away but still too close as always, stepping elegantly over patches of black ice, and there's Jack, all the clumsy weight Jenny lacks, stomping his boots and blowing on his hands, an exaggerated performance of chilled department director.

“You're not him, Will,” Jenny growls softly. It's always strange, how her voice is deeper than Jack's. Longer vocal cords. Violins. No. Focus.

“All my life,” Will says, and he sounds high pitched and weird in his own ears, “all my life, I've been standing on this foundational belief that the popular image of us as inhuman psychopaths is just baseless medieval prejudice, and now I meet him, and you expect me to just shrug it off, oh, _that_ daemonless man is a monstrous freak but _you're_ not so everything's just fine, right?”

“Will, stop.” It's a command. Jenny only talks in commands, at least to Jack's employees. There are tiny particles of ice on her fur. It would feel cold and warm and soft all at once, if he stroked it. He shudders, and breathes deeply- he will force his mind away from this perverse compulsion before it leads to fingers fisting in a dead girl's hair, a poor comparison to the short coarse hair of her daemon's skin but he'll do his best with the materials he has, honor every part of them- a whine building deep in his throat because he wanted the daemon so badly, wanted to smother him slowly so he could feel how much they loved him- fingers stroking a doe's coat, murmuring shh, shh to calm her as he holds a knife to Abigail's throat- _get the hell out of my head, you bastards, you're dead I killed you._

Will breathes. He can't even storm off, they came in Jack's car. He hasn't felt this trapped in, oh, a few days at least. It's as unpleasant as ever.

He remembers the crime scene, the thrill of the monster obeying him at last, the wolf bowing her head at his feet, how beautiful it felt. He is off balance. He wants to call someone. He wants to call Beverly and Adrastos. He can't. If he did he'd fall apart and scare them off for good.

“We don't even know he's the killer,” Jack says.

Will laughs shrilly. “He's the killer.” That's what he'd been sensing, looking at that brutal crime scene. Not an impossible dinosaur daemon, but a twisted parody of a man.

 

* * *

 

He should call Jack. But the thought of Jack Crawford driving out here to stomp and glare is too overwhelming for him to process. He's scrolling down the contact list without really knowing what he's doing. He's dialing.

It picks up on the third ring. “Will?”

“I killed Randall Tier,” he says. No preamble. He's not coherent enough for that.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Are you at your house?”

He makes some noise of agreement.

“Okay, just stay there until we get to you, all right?”

“What do I-” He doesn't know how to complete the sentence.

“Make yourself some tea or something, Will, I don't fucking know, I'm getting in the car right now, I'll be there in less than an hour. What? Oh, sure. I'll put it on the back seat. Yeah, speaker setting. Now will you let me start the car?”

Will waits for things to make sense.

“Hey, you still there?”

 Adrastos. “Yeah,” Will says, swallowing painfully. He's starting to become aware that the cell phone is glued to his hand by congealing blood.

“Bev's busy not crashing, but if you want you can keep talking to me. She hates my backseat driving anyhow.”

Will sits down on the blessedly clean kitchen chair. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Hannibal sent him after me.” With each word he comes a little bit back to himself. Telling a story requires thinking, requires presence. “He tried to kill me, but... but what I did to him, it, it wasn't self defense.”

“Did you want to kill him?”

“ _I don't know.”_

There's silence for a moment.

It's like when he though he'd killed Abigail and Damaris, except better, because it's adrenaline surging through his veins, not fever, and worse, because he has all his memories, and he's still shaking with blood rage. This is too much, he thinks. This is it, this is where they bail. They'd be crazy to have any other reaction.

But when Adrastos speaks again, it's not fear making his voice shake but anger.

“I'm going to murder him.”

Will shakes his head uselessly. “What?”

“Lecter. I'm going to tear out his eyeballs.”

Will feels a hysterical laugh rip its way out of his throat. “That's. That's... really not helping me calm down.”

“Sorry.”

They're supposed to be the last bastion of normality in his life. He doesn't need them dragged into the insanity that's colonizing his world.

There are some muffled noises and then Beverly is speaking into his ear, with that odd distance that means her phone is on speaker. “This isn't your fault. We need to report this to the local police, and then get you to a non murderous doctor-”

“No.” His voice is too loud. He feels himself twitch, startled by his own volume.

Silence, then, “What?”

He can't tell which of them said it.

“If I do that, our chance of getting Hannibal Lecter is gone. How many more will he kill? I can't. I can't. I'm in this until the end.”

Beverly says, “You're destroying yourself.”

He doesn't want to. He isn't suicidal or self harming. He wants to get on a plane and fly to California, buy a house large enough for the dogs with lots of locks on the doors, pretend that he's safe. He wants to pick the gun up from the floor and drive to Baltimore and knock on Hannibal's door and put a bullet in his brain when he opens it, prison would be fine if Hannibal was gone, if he could just sleep.

He isn't going to do either.

“Don't hang up,” he says. Did he say that already? The conversation's getting muddled in his head.

“I won't,” Adrastos says.

He doesn't.

 

* * *

 

Cassia doesn't touch him, but she looks at him, flat head weaving back and forth so both eyes can keep him in sight. It's unnerving, but he stares back, because looking at her is still easier than looking at Hannibal.

“They'll never catch you,” Will says.

Hannibal refills Will's glass, leans forward to hand it to them. Their chairs have moved so close. “I agree that Jack will never find the Ripper until his quarry wishes to be found. His obsession blinds him.”

“But?”

“Ms Katz. The wonderfully clever forensics expert. I believe she might manage to inconvenience the Ripper, if she really put her mind to it.”

Will sips the wine, tries not to think about what might be in it. “You may be right.”

“She is a friend of yours, yes?”

Cassia's eyes never blink.

“Ah, friendship,” Hannibal muses. “I envy Ms Katz, you know. Her friendship with you must be so... pure. Uncomplicated. It pains me, William, to think that our friendship might not be so close.”

Will forces himself to look up from Cassia's waving head to look Hannibal in the face. If he lets his vision unfocus, Hannibal blurs until he's simply a pale shape. Will aims his gaze at Hannibal's eyes and bends his mouth into a smile. “Oh,” he says, casually, “my relationship with Beverly isn't nearly as intimate as you're imagining.” He takes another long sip, and lets his tongue slide slowly across his upper lip. “She sees only one of my masks. I don't feel I can show her my true self.”

Hannibal's shoulders relax a fraction. “Ah yes,” he says. “It is so rare for others to truly know us, as we know ourselves.”

“I know,” Will says. “I'm very lucky.”

 

* * *

 

 “He's going to kill you,” Will breathes into the cool glass face of his cell phone. His voice is ragged. He can barely hear it over the pounding in his ears. “You make him nervous. He wants me to kill you but if I don't he'll do it himself.”

“He can damn well try,” Adrastos snaps.

Will's fingers clench around the phone's edges. Raindrops are beginning to fall from the sky. He's shivering, and the panic isn't helping. “No,” he says. He's going to lose them. Like Abigail and Damaris and Georgia Madchen. He's going to lose them to the wendigo. “No. No, no.”

“Okay, breathe, Will.” Beverly now. “It's okay. We'll figure this out.”

“Beverly.” He doesn't often say her name. It feels strange. “I can't- I can't.” If he doesn't kill her, Hannibal will-

“We have to fake your death.”

Beverly laughs, then- “Wait, are you serious?”

He is very serious.

“I need to discuss this with the boss.”

“Don't take too long,” Will says. “He'll be coming for you tonight.” He fumbles to hang up, and the phone jumps out of his hand and onto the ground, where a large crack spreads across the screen.

 

* * *

 

They stage a brutal murder, in case Hannibal is watching, and then Beverly and Adrastos go into hiding, are cloistered away in some FBI office, and Will is left dealing with Jack alone, and he carves up Randall Tier and serves him to Hannibal, pretending the slabs of meat are bits of Beverly, and he realizes that even if he makes it out of the next few days alive he will never be a functioning member of society again, that he has been too twisted and molded to fit into any role that's not Jack's pet bloodhound or Hannibal's beloved project. He will never eat without gagging, never be touched by human or daemon without shaking at the memory of Cassia resting her weight on his arm, never sleep without a gun under the bedframe. Between them Hannibal and Jack have crushed every last one of his dreams of a decent life. 

He remembers one potential victim of the Ripper, a man who Price had been sure hadn't died from the organ removal. They hadn't been able to determine cause of death, and had assumed fatal damage to the man's rabbit daemon. Will knows now that the daemon had suffocated inside Cassia's engorged stomach after the cobra swallowed the other daemon whole.

Those who consider Will a monster have no idea what true evil looks like. But they'll all know, after Will takes Hannibal down. They will read about it in the newspaper. They will turn on their televisions and memorize the skull like face.

Just a few more days, and Will will be free or dead. His strange reluctance to betray Cassia and Hannibal won't get in the way. He'll act and it will be over.

 

* * *

 

The Ripper always delivers the killing blow to his victims' daemons.

He can't do that to Will. Not obviously, anyway. Will wonders if maybe he's looking for that fluttering creature hidden somewhere inside. If he's slicing into Will to find it.

There's nothing inside Will but blood and pain.

Abigail, he can dispatch more efficiently. Damaris crashes to the floor in a tide of red. Hannibal holds Abigail as she folds, lowers her gently to the ground. She's clinging so tightly to his hand he has to bend her fingers loose. The terror in her eyes hurts worse than the hole in Will's stomach.

Will glances across her body and sees that Hannibal succeeded anyway. The stag's whole body shudders with each tortured breath. Its liquid eyes fix on Will. An injured animal begging for his help. There's nothing he can do. His hands fall from the doe's neck. At least he won't die alone.

Soothing darkness for a while, and then, “Will? Will!” a chorus of voices calling his name, or maybe just one voice, modulated by fear and desperation. Cool hands on the sides of his face. Pressure on his stomach, and he almost blacks out at the screaming pain of that, but- No, don't, not me, help her-

“Will, I'm sorry, she's gone. I need you to focus on staying with me.”

Will pries open his eyelids- like swimming through treacle- and sees that it's true. His hands clutch at empty air. No doe, just blood. He thinks he might be sobbing.

Alana- Jack-

“Paramedics are on their way; now stay still and put yourself first for once.” The hands on his stomach press harder and he wants to scream but he can only gasp. Breathing seems a monumental task. He listens to the stag's next labored inhale and tries to match it. Fails.

“Don't you dare die on me, you complete asshole.”

“I'm sorry,” he whispers with the last air in his lungs. The next breath tears him apart at the middle and tears fog his vision.

“You should be,” Beverly whispers back. “Idiot.”

A softer pressure on his neck. He can't see, but he can feel the raven settle in the space between shoulder and chin, can feel the warmth, the brush of feathers, the gentle strokes of a beak along his jaw. Will reaches up a shaking hand, moves his fingers down the softness of one wing, leaving a trail of sticky blood. He knows it now, what he's been missing. This simple intimacy. It's a very kind gesture. A final act of comfort. The texture of those feathers is so soothing, but the feeling is leaving his fingers and his hand falls. Beverly is shouting at him, and he wishes things were different, wishes he could thank them for everything, but there's a darkness before him that promises an end to pain and loneliness.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Cassia is a king cobra. Rafal is a white-faced owl.
> 
> I ended up cutting out their scenes, but Margot's daemon is a stallion and Mason's is, of course, a pig.


End file.
